**4. Green verticals**

Among the more prominent and enthusiastically accepted projects of urban horticulture are certainly green walls, also called living walls or even vertical gardens. After the botanist Patrick Blanc created his first successful large indoor

**147**

designs [6, 7].

**Figure 11.**

*Bosquett in Versailles, France.*

treillage [6, 7].

*Historical Gardens as an Inspiration for the Future of Urban Horticultural Gardens*

green wall in 1986 (Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie in Paris), these structures started springing up indoors and outdoors, in small or large scales, monocultural or mixed, creating patterns, images, or just a pleasant green "screen" of plants (e.g., **Figure 10**). Origins of green walls can be found already in the hanging gardens of Babylon, however, it seems more plausible that the idea and form of green walls stem from the green walls of Baroque gardens—the *bosquett*.

Baroque, the typical garden design was based on regular, geometric patterns. The so-called formal garden design emphasized the rational supremacy of man over nature—this was reflected not only in the floor plan of the garden but also in the plants. These were sheared and shaped into certain straight lines, images of things, animals, or even human-like shapes. This art of shearing and growing plants was called *ars topiarium*. It was used by the old Greeks and Romans and revived in the Renaissance. Thus, in Baroque, garden designers continued and upgraded this art of plant designing by creating long green walls, corridors, or even streets with high and sheared trees and shrubs (e.g., **Figure 11**). Green borders led the view into infinity, giving a sense of the grandeur of nature controlled by man as well as offering a retreat into the green spaces behind the green walls. There were smaller spaces of a more intimate nature inside such bosquetts—such rooms contained benches, wells, or even additional green

Baroque gardens: when observing tall buildings clad in green walls, they appear as green corridors in Baroque gardens along which gentlemen walked after they

<sup>3</sup> Bosquett (Fr.) is a wooded part of a designed garden or a carefully groomed woodland in garden designs. High sheared hedges create special spaces—green rooms, cabinets (Gartenraume, nem.; Salle de verdure, Fr.). These can have different functions and motifs (corridor, a ballroom, a pond, a lounge, an amphitheater, etc.). In Baroque gardens, bosquett was most often arranged behind the parterre. It was popular in the mid-seventeenth to mid-eighteenth centuries in major formal garden

<sup>4</sup> Treillage (Fr.) is a green corridor consisting of a wooden or steel frame on which the plants climb—it has an architectural character. Most often the frame is made of green- or white-painted wood. These green hallways have pavilions at their intersections or corners. They offer walks and contemplation in the shade. Trellis (Fr.) is merely a framework for climbing plants; it is simpler and smaller in size than

Today's green walls are no different from those of

3 In

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.90350*

architectures (e.g., treillage).4

left the parterre.

*Historical Gardens as an Inspiration for the Future of Urban Horticultural Gardens DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.90350*

green wall in 1986 (Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie in Paris), these structures started springing up indoors and outdoors, in small or large scales, monocultural or mixed, creating patterns, images, or just a pleasant green "screen" of plants (e.g., **Figure 10**). Origins of green walls can be found already in the hanging gardens of Babylon, however, it seems more plausible that the idea and form of green walls stem from the green walls of Baroque gardens—the *bosquett*. 3 In Baroque, the typical garden design was based on regular, geometric patterns. The so-called formal garden design emphasized the rational supremacy of man over nature—this was reflected not only in the floor plan of the garden but also in the plants. These were sheared and shaped into certain straight lines, images of things, animals, or even human-like shapes. This art of shearing and growing plants was called *ars topiarium*. It was used by the old Greeks and Romans and revived in the Renaissance. Thus, in Baroque, garden designers continued and upgraded this art of plant designing by creating long green walls, corridors, or even streets with high and sheared trees and shrubs (e.g., **Figure 11**). Green borders led the view into infinity, giving a sense of the grandeur of nature controlled by man as well as offering a retreat into the green spaces behind the green walls. There were smaller spaces of a more intimate nature inside such bosquetts—such rooms contained benches, wells, or even additional green architectures (e.g., treillage).4 Today's green walls are no different from those of Baroque gardens: when observing tall buildings clad in green walls, they appear as green corridors in Baroque gardens along which gentlemen walked after they left the parterre.

**Figure 11.** *Bosquett in Versailles, France.*

*Urban Horticulture - Necessity of the Future*

the heat or hustle and bustle of events in the garden, to cool themselves down, marvel at the sounds of water and wind, read stories embodied in sculptural decoration, and chase the glare of water on artificial cave walls, often claded with shells. For urban horticulture, these artificial caves could be quite interesting because it is not difficult to integrate them into the built structures of cities. They could find their place in a small square, on the roofs of apartment houses, or in steep slopes of riverbeds. A grotta has its own closed water system and can even allow plants to thrive in its wet and humid environment. In addition, in Baroque gardens the grotta was often a part of an architectural structure that provided space for an artificial cave in the lower part, while in the upper part one could find a pavilion, a festive hall, or a kind of viewpoint. Here, the visitors liked to linger, enjoy the view, and listen to the sounds of water coming from the grotta. Often, the sound of the water was also used as an accompaniment to small concerts on the upper floor. Such two-story garden facilities in historic gardens were also intended for other functions (the range of garden houses and architectural scenery in gardens expanded in the late eighteenth century with the English landscape style); from banquets, events, spectacles, games, music pavilions to guest rooms in the upper floor and to retreat rooms, artisan workshops, or cold stores in the lower part. The lower part of such buildings was often dug into the slopes, thus providing a constant temperature. Already in the Baroque period (or since the time of Catherine de'Medici in the sixteenth century when ice cream was invented), the nobility liked to place cold stores in the vicinity of their mansions. Ice was brought into these cold rooms in the winter, accumulated in large quantities in the middle of a usually centrally designed room, where it was preserved and helped refrigerate food for as long as 6 months [9, 14, 15]. Would such a cold store also benefit a modern city in the time of global warming (instead of electronic devices which, when cooling, also emit large amounts of

Among the more prominent and enthusiastically accepted projects of urban horticulture are certainly green walls, also called living walls or even vertical gardens. After the botanist Patrick Blanc created his first successful large indoor

*Patrick Blanc (with architect Jean Nouvel), an outdoor green wall, Musée du quai Branly, Paris.*

**146**

**Figure 10.**

heat)?

**4. Green verticals**

<sup>3</sup> Bosquett (Fr.) is a wooded part of a designed garden or a carefully groomed woodland in garden designs. High sheared hedges create special spaces—green rooms, cabinets (Gartenraume, nem.; Salle de verdure, Fr.). These can have different functions and motifs (corridor, a ballroom, a pond, a lounge, an amphitheater, etc.). In Baroque gardens, bosquett was most often arranged behind the parterre. It was popular in the mid-seventeenth to mid-eighteenth centuries in major formal garden designs [6, 7].

<sup>4</sup> Treillage (Fr.) is a green corridor consisting of a wooden or steel frame on which the plants climb—it has an architectural character. Most often the frame is made of green- or white-painted wood. These green hallways have pavilions at their intersections or corners. They offer walks and contemplation in the shade. Trellis (Fr.) is merely a framework for climbing plants; it is simpler and smaller in size than treillage [6, 7].
